Monday, May 21, 2012

"Booker, whose career is just beginning, doesn’t have the luxury that Obama does to bite the hand that feeds him. Christie is a popular governor and business-types love his cost-cutting approach. Booker can’t afford to be seen denouncing one of the most important businesses in his state."Chris Stirewalt

Former Bush spokesperson Dana Perino says that President Barack Obama’s White House has been dismissing advice from their “friends” like Newark Mayor Cory Booker, who called an Obama ad “nauseating,” and Campbell Brown, who wrote that that the president was “condescending” toward women.

Appearing on NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday, Booker had said that the Obama campaign should stop criticizing presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney for job losses caused by Bain Capital, a firm that he founded. The Newark mayor later released a YouTube video walking back his remarks.

“Cory Booker is a friend of the White House,” Perino told Fox News host Gretchen Carlson on Monday. “In some ways, your friends give you the best advice. They could have taken that yesterday as some friendly advice. A brush-back pitch to let them know that what he is hearing across the country—what Cory Booker is hearing is that this isn’t working.”

Carlson pointed out that “there are a lot of Democrats that don’t agree with the tactic that this administration is using because all it does is promote class warfare.”

Fox News host Clayton Morris asked Perino if it was “going to be a problem for the administration” that former CNN host Campbell Brown, the wife of a Romney adviser, had written a New York Times op-ed accusing the president of “condescending” to women.

“Yesterday, the White House gets these two broadsides and instead of saying, ‘That’s good advice. Let us take some time to think about that and come back out and have a strong commencement address that President Obama is going to give today.’ Instead they basically trashed two of their friends,” Perino explained. “It looks like they have nothing else to go on.”

WHEN I listen to President Obama speak to and about women, he sometimes sounds too paternalistic for my taste. In numerous appearances over the years — most recently at the Barnard graduation — he has made reference to how women are smarter than men. It’s all so tired, the kind of fake praise showered upon those one views as easy to impress. As I listen, I am always bracing for the old go-to cliché: “Behind every great man is a great woman.”

Some women are smarter than men and some aren’t. But to suggest to women that they deserve dominance instead of equality is at best a cheap applause line.

My bigger concern is that in courting women, Mr. Obama’s campaign so far has seemed maddeningly off point. His message to the Barnard graduates was that they should fight for a “seat at the table” — the head seat, he made sure to add. He conceded that it’s a tough economy, but he told the grads, “I am convinced you are tougher” and “things will get better — they always do.”

Brown then shared some employment statistics that belie media assertions Obama's policies are helping women, in particular college graduates under 30:

According to the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University, about 53.6 percent of men and women under the age of 25 who hold bachelor’s degrees were jobless or underemployed last year, the most in at least 11 years. According to the Pew Research Center, if we broaden the age group to 18- to 29-year-olds, an estimated 37 percent are unemployed or out of the work force, the highest share in more than three decades.

Brown then surprisingly took a shot at Obama's "silly and embarrassing" new ad targeting women:

The women I know who are struggling in this economy couldn’t be further from the fictional character of Julia, presented in Mr. Obama’s Web ad, “The Life of Julia,” a silly and embarrassing caricature based on the assumption that women look to government at every meaningful phase of their lives for help.

And she wasn't done:

It’s obvious why the president is doing a full-court press for the vote of college-educated women in particular. The Republican primaries probably did turn some women away. [...]

But Mitt Romney will never be confused with Rick Santorum on these issues, and many women understand that. (I should disclose here that my husband is an adviser to Mr. Romney; I have no involvement with any campaign, and have been an independent journalist throughout my career.) The struggling women in my life all laughed when I asked them if contraception or abortion rights would be a major factor in their decision about this election. For them, and for most other women, the economy overwhelms everything else.

Another recent Pew Research Center survey found that voters, when thinking about whom to vote for in the fall, are most concerned about the economy (86 percent) and jobs (84 percent). Near the bottom of the list were some of the hot-button social issues.

Exactly. And although Brown chose not to bring the media into her criticisms, their focus on the fictitious War On Women was shameful due precisely to the public's priorities which are not on social issues at the moment.

The President wanted to shift attention away from a struggling economy, and his dutiful fans in the press did their part.

Brown concluded:

[T]he promise of [Obama's] campaign four years ago has given way to something else — a failure to connect with tens of millions of Americans, many of them women, who feel economic opportunity is gone and are losing hope. In an effort to win them back, Mr. Obama is trying too hard. He’s employing a tone that can come across as grating and even condescending. He really ought to drop it. Most women don’t want to be patted on the head or treated as wards of the state. They simply want to be given a chance to succeed based on their talent and skills.

This entire stunt by the White House that began in January appears to have failed miserably, and if the media hadn't gone along with it, we wouldn't have wasted almost five months talking about things America doesn't care about at the moment.

Newark Mayor Cory Booker spent Sunday afternoon attempting to clarify comments he made on Meet The Press, in which he called the Obama campaign's attack on Bain Capital (and private equity) “nauseating."

In an almost four-minute follow up video for his social media followers, Booker explained that Romney's business record was fair game, and that he was simply frustrated by negative campaigning.

Here is that Version:

The Obama campaign, however, sent out a different video on Sunday night. On Twitter, Obama campaign press secretary Ben La Bolt tweeted out a 35-second version of the video, which was very likely cut by the Obama campaign (because, when I clicked on La Bolt's link, it had just 8 views).

Here is that video:

What gets lost in the edit is the nuance of Booker's argument. Watching the 35-second video, you would believe that Booker was flip-flopping from his comments on Meet The Press and going on an all-out assault on Romney. In the four-minute video, Booker stands by his comments -- including "nauseating" -- and explains that while he does think Romney's record is fair game, he remains "furstrated" by the Obama campaign's negative attacks.

In other words, the 35-second video is a reverse from the original argument. The four-minute video is an extenstion of the original argument.

Asked for his response to the ad, RNC spokesman Tim Miller, who has been attacking the ad on Twitter, emailed:

It's clear this video was orchestrated by the Obama campaign, and as long as he is President any defense of the free market/private sector by members of his party must be silenced and apologized for.

Of note, that same YouTube account also has a 17-second version of Booker's video, which as of 9 p.m. Sunday has exactly one view:

Mayor Cory Booker of Newark, New Jersey, a Democrat, said Sunday that some of the current politicking makes him sick - including criticism of Mitt Romney from his own party.

Booker, whose national standing is on the rise, distanced himself from attacks on Romney's record at the private equity firm Bain Capital, which he said make him "uncomfortable."

"I'm not going to sit here and indict private equity. To me we're getting to a ridiculous point in America," Booker said on NBC's "Meet the Press." "If you look at the totality of Bain Capital's record, they've done a lot to support businesses, to grow businesses, and this, to me, I'm very uncomfortable with."

Booker compared Romney's background to his own as mayor and called for the attacks from both parties to cease. The two-term mayor has supported significant budget cuts in his city that he said were necessary to correct its fiscal order.

"This kind of stuff is nauseating to me on both sides. It's nauseating to the American public. Enough is enough, stop attacking private equity. Stop attacking Jeremiah Wright," Booker said. "This stuff has got to stop because what it does is, it undermines to me what this country should be focused on."

Romney's history in the private sector and a Republican-backed proposal for an ad linking President Barack Obama to his controversial former pastor, Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., have occupied much of the campaign chatter of late.

Team Obama has condemned Romney and his partners for profiting while some of the companies with which he was involved laid off workers or filed for bankruptcy. Romney's campaign has defended his record as an example of capitalism and accused the Obama re-election campaign of waging class warfare.

Ultimately, Booker, an Obama supporter, said the 2012 election is about "two men with fundamentally different ideals."

"The sexy stuff of campaigns that the media plays over and over again that we wasted time talking about is this negative stuff," Booker said. "The reality is – and I listen to Obama. I have Obama surrogate notes here, they're talking about the positive issues."

After an onslaught of attention following his Sunday show appearance, Booker took to YouTube Sunday afternoon to reiterate his support of the president and elaborate on his frustrations with current state of political campaigns.

Booker said Obama "more than deserves re-election," but that he hopes the general election will focus on the "issues that count."

"I am indeed upset. I am indeed frustrated," Booker said. "But I believe the American public, working together can more and more denounce this type of campaigning and more and more focus on the issues that count."

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